The Role of Information Management for the Sustainable Conservation of Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Central to the entire discipline of heritage restoration and conservation is the concept of information management. Nevertheless, traditionally, conservation and restoration has been a poorly documented discipline, which has led not only to a lack of standardization and awareness about the processes carried out in the past, but also poses problems both when new restoration works are necessary and for the preventive conservation of the elements of heritage. This study sets out to propose a conceptual framework to explore the relationship between conservation of heritage and information management on the basis of case studies; in particular: a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) of a regional government concerning an endangered plant (wild grapevine) with an important potential for cultural and touristic uses in a wine-making region; an open data guide—the Digital Guide of Andalusian Cultural Heritage; a university repository connected to Europeana, which contains reports and outcomes of projects of geometric documentation of elements of heritage; a repository of an organization in charge of the protection and care of the heritage; and finally, two examples of the use of heritage building information models (HBIM) in complex monuments. After discussing the characteristics of each case, this paper concludes that, although the availability of information and tools is growing, further progress is still necessary concerning the interoperability, outreach and reuse of the different solutions.

Parametric Design Applied to Heritage Buildings. A Dialogue between Tradition and Evolution. The Case Study of Saint Clare’s Monastery in Belalcazar, Spain

“…Regarding HBIM, it has been illustrated how a library of interactive parametric objects can be built, subject to the variability of the historical dimension of architectural patterns. This inclusion in the methodology provides architects, engineers, archaeologists and historians, etc., among other agents involved, with concepts and tools requiring a different and additional vision, taking into account aspects that are not normally addressed in new building projects [19].…”

Towards Digital Twin Driven Cultural Heritage Management: A Hbim-Based Workflow for Energy Improvement of Modern Buildings

“…Firstly, traditional administrative practices diverge from those required by adopting digital processes for planning interventions, for the use, the management, and the maintenance of built assets (Di Giuda and Pattini, 2021). Then there are additional difficulties in Cultural Heritage preservation (Korro Bañuelos et al, 2021). Historical architectures are often unique objects whose information is challenging to find since it is usually fragmented in numerous paper archives.…”

Heritage Cataloguing in History: Conceptual and Graphical Foundations of Immovable Cultural Heritage Data Bases in the Case of Spain

“…At the same time, the inclusion of GPS in mobile phones allows the localization of geo-referenced heritage in real time. The capacity of GISs for analysis and cross-referencing in relation to territory alongside the parallel development of open-access ICHDBs, allows complex searches on heritage to be carried out without too much effort on the part of any user [49].…”